Alternator

I don't think it could hurt to place the order if you want the set and it lets you. hat being said it is unclear whether they will be able to fulfill the order - I think the picture of how much stock is currently available is unclear at this stage. Just remember they wont charge you for something they can't supply.

Same for New Zealand... I have no idea how many were provisioned to these areas though - but it does make me glad I actually placed the order during my lunch break... blimey I get home from work and that's it (so not even 1 day of availability). I really hope they weren't bought by people who're just going to markup the price and on sell!

You can actually browse all the prices by changing the region on the Lego website, they freely let you do this. I'm quite pleasantly surprised regarding this set - if you sub out the GST then it works out at $208USD before tax.

And here I am to eat my words - it became available today in our region at the $54 (my order has been placed ).

So it was actually $53 at one point on the site?! I had thought that it was someone mistaken. If it's anything inline with the Aus price I'm not looking forward to it. (I wonder if the $53 was meant to be the Aus price, and $70, the NZD?) I just checked today (1st aug), and it's back on the store and now available... $54 The 41999 limited edition crawler is also up at $300. I'm pleasantly surprised by both those prices... Sold out in under a day online for NZ?! hopefully there will be some sets destined for store shelves here then or more stock becomes available online! (I was lucky enough to get my order in, but hope that other fans don't miss out)

Where did you get that price for New Zealand from? Ahh, I see this was a price temporarily posted on the Lego site, hopefully it comes back at that price, but if it is in fact 69 AUD (which seems high, and I see their page is temporarily gone too) then it will probably be somewhere between 80 - 100nzd Personally it'll be a tough sell to me at any more than 60NZD.

As a bit of an aside I'm under the impression that Lego attempt to keep the part count down/manageable in their designs, so the idea of them purposely attempting to make ever bigger sets doesn't fully mesh. They may choose a subject (like the UniMog) that they know is going to come out big - but for this crane to be the highest piece count is a little odd given it isn't a new subject for them beyond the fully motorized riggers (it doesn't actually look bigger than the previous flagship crane).

All I got was the 31011 Creator Plane. I already had all the big sets that were available. I was toying with the idea of getting a Death Star, but the shop I went to didn't have one - Perhaps just as well. I think that the presenter was trying to play/goof it up a bit, I like the fathers collection P.s. Thanks for mentioning, I wouldn't have spotted that interview otherwise.

I love this kind of thing :) when I first looked I thought it was just a basic little model (good looking one), I didn't realise you had crammed the feature set in too. Looking forward to seeing it in action

I'm with one of the commenters above - a lot of those parts are just pins. Whether or not this is still an indicator of a higher count on more interesting parts or not I don't know. For me I'm more interested in the functions, not the number of parts. So something with more interesting functions / and perhaps a greater number of functions is a model I will generally be more interested in. With regards to a UCS level technic set, are people thinking in terms of form? or in terms of function? I have wondered in past about hybrid creator/technic style designs, but I wonder if that would be more its own theme. For me a UCS technic set wouldn't be about being big, it would be about achieving a function set that out shines what you would otherwise see in a standard technic set. For example, the new crane has a high part count... But it can't really lift anything can it?! A UCS technic crane would be a crane with similar feature set that actually could lift. And there are some MOC cranes out there that do lift relatively decent weights (not sure if they all use modified/custom parts admittedly... But even Lego will swap metal in for parts that need the extra strength). In some ways I consider the 9398 and 41999 could be regarded as UCS, as well as perhaps one or two others from the Technic line.

Not so long ago I had about 30 - 40 sets of varying sizes and themes waiting to be built. Basically I picked them up because I knew I wanted them and didn't want to miss out. But lots of different factors such as work, other hobbies, free time, space etc got in the way of me cracking into them! I got stuck in about a month ago, cleared most of the smaller sets and have been doing 1 - 2 a week on the bigger ones. I did get a little spooked actually, as I had found defects with three of the sets... Most of the stickers for the Millenium falcon were peeling, a piece of train track was warped, and I had a long 2x12 plate that was broken in a star wars set that was out of production :S... Got them sorted by Lego but it did prompt me to get into these sets! You don;t want to sit on a set for years and open it just to find damaged parts. As for Technics, I try to get most of the sets but some I'm not as fussed on as others, so I have the black logging truck 9397, and the flatbed truck which I have yet to build and I keep putting off. Most of the larger sets aren't opened instantly anymore and are saved for an idle weekend instead.

I'm really torn on this one; as a standalone set it's quite a cool set and it has that "limited edition" factor, but on the other hand I have the 9398 and so a lot of what this set offers is already covered for me. Obviously the 41999 looks better, not that I have any issue with how the 9398 looks... This is going to be a hard call. Is there a side by side comparison shot of those two models?

I think I've seen the lone ranger sets at quite a few stores over the past few weeks - Warehouses included.

Nope, but that would be a pretty pathetic toy sale if the sale was gone before the day even began! I didn't see anything that really jumped out at me, there might be one or two small sets that I look at picking up, but I'll probably do that in store instead. Damn, now I'm torn between waiting for toy world or placing an order in mightyapes sale. Edit: I should say that the 31012 Family house seems like a good price from their sale - I've already got it (which is why I didn't notice), but I think it was $85 vs the rrp of $130, perhaps there will be other items that hit a good price in stores as I suspect they don't list everything they sell online?!

nevermind

On the third page of the catalogue (second in the pdf) the image of the MF has been mirrored (the cockpit can be seen on the left side of the MF)

The lego shop online is having a 30% off sale on several items. http://shop.lego.com...Sales-And-Deals Of course you'll need to put together an order to trigger free shipping (about $200) to be worth it (there are a few interesting items, but perhaps not enough unless you're already planning an order)

Taking a look it seemed pretty reasonable to me, tempting in fact (although I am stretched already), what set is the yellow car? Probably advice wise, perhaps including a bit more info on the sets that are involved.

The Warehouse has Jabba's Palace at 189 for it's daily deal

My recent purchase was The Padawan Menace DVD and The Empire Strikes Out DVD Both with the exclusive minifig (I had to import for that), I enjoyed both episodes actually (I wasn't expecting to with the Padawan Menace, but on second viewing it grew on me), they were both kid orientated but had plenty of genre aware references to be enjoyable for me as an adult. The young Han Figure is a little plain tbh, but I do enjoy the Darth figure with Medal - he can go with my Medalled up Luke and Han (no accessories of course).

It's still pricey but perhaps not as punishingly so as I was expecting that set to be - I'll be giving it some very serious consideration! (although Lego seem to be putting out a lot of good larger sets in this second half - things could get expensive quick). P.S. It could be too late in the day/weekend but it seems that Toy-World in Lower Hutt is doing a buy 1 get 1 half price sale, I'm only hearing this secondhand (you may want to call and confirm??), and I have no idea if it applies to other Toy-Worlds or not.

Well if those rumors about the DS are true that makes me happy - I suppose what I'd be wondering is if either of those sets are still being produced by Lego or if they're at the phase of clearing the last production run of it? (to this I have no idea how long a run takes to sell for something like that). As for discounts, they're hard to predict and often governed by Murhpy's law when it is something you want. I too want the DS, but due to price it is not a guaranteed sale. My approach (which may help you decide), I have a price in mind, if it comes lower than that price I will buy - othewise it will simply have to be a set I do not purchase... I had a similar view with the SSD, as it happened it did come down to bang on my upper limit.

I do agree - I will say this first though - I have that minecrafty set, I can only see those mold points on the top of the minecraft set (and not as bad as in your pic), if I look at it from the same angle the photo was taken I don't see the mold points (not that I doubt they photoshopped that aspect). I do have a problem with photoshopping, it is a little concerning how much stuff is fake out there - as for your creator car with turning wheels photo shopped example, that would affect my purchasing decision - I actually wonder if I bought that set you mentioned as I bought it for the turning wheels aspect (I have yet to open it...). EDIT: I just checked and it does have working steering Basically I think that photoshop has been taken too far in advertising, it's one thing to cleanup a photo with it, it is another to change the reality of the thing that got photographed (body image is the place where it seems to offend the worst!) It has actually gone far enough now that I would like to see regulation clamp down on it, the industry isn't dealing with this. Perhaps not banning it - but I do think a disclaimer that lists the changes made... that might seem onerous but if they're going to the trouble of manipulating the reality of the image, a little list of the changes shouldn't be too much trouble.

Well it's unlikely we'll suddenly change our minds about the value for money thing while we can still see the price differences. While everyone no matter the region may want things cheaper, I would say that there are general threshold prices which change the way you feel towards something and if you can consider it good value for money or not - don't get me wrong, I love Lego, but it is expensive here and so I can't rate it good value for money. What I found interesting was that it sounded like the % of women who responded decreased, was that just because proportionally less women responded across the board, or because those other regions pulled the stat down (i.e. less women involved in the new countries in the survey). I don't think they meant more women in the community per se, but that in general terms female lego fans are more likely to be community involved (how I read it anyway). 8% is a fairly low stat, it would be cool if they manage to increase that; my partner likes Lego, but she doesn't really indulge in it (I think mainly due to that price issue).

I tend to agree with what Zzz wrote above. My gut instinct is that there will be decreasing space to make the kinds of gains on sets that have been seen so far, here are the reasons why I think this could be (so all just "speculative" opinion): Diminishing Dark Age population By this I mean that less people will be coming out of protracted Dark Ages in the future, this is because going back in the day Lego did not have a progression past teens for Lego (they did not cater to an AFOL market)... Now they do, so that kid that starts with Lego isn't going to be as likely to drop off for as long as had been seen in past (imo). That is important because I think that represents a good chunk of the people that would be looking at getting a set after its run has finished Increased access to information People can easily see what sets have come in past and also get a peek into what sets will come in the future along with prices for all - they're going to easily be able to see what kind of mark up a set has on it vs its RRP - this could make it harder to push for those massive prices Following on, some of the sets that have experienced the high markup were those Modulars - why? because people didn't really realise at the time they would become this great range, now people know and so they're looking out for this kind of stuff The cat seems to be out of the bag This doesn't mean to not do it, but it isn't a secret that some Lego sets have sold for large amounts after they're dc'd, what this means is that other people will be competing for those big $ sales. TLG seem to be pumping out a lot of nice sets This could work both ways, for example, so many collectible sets could make it difficult for people to get all the ones they want during production, and so they may look for them in the after market at a later date (probably realising the extreme markups) But it can also mean that the purchaser is already spoiled for choice from current sets to direct their money to, so is it value for money for such a person to buy a set that has had a very high markup placed on it? (would you buy a set at twice rrp?) TLG could very well take the wind out of any given set by either re-releasing it or updating it with a new version I realise that all sounds quite pessimistic, and really it is, because I think we've all seen that set or other such item that we could have bought and sold for more later, but thought nah its peaked... But it is speculation, or effectively a gamble, the trick will be to make it as educated a gamble as possible. If you just wanted to dip your toes, then you probably have an idea on a set that you would like to try, or perhaps you get access to a great discount (B-Wing, *grumble grumble*), but that could take time to see the outcome, in some ways that keeps the risk to you in check and doesn't put a strain on storage etc. And really that would be where my advice sits - then it is more of a hobby and takes a bit of sting out of buying Lego rather than neutralising the cost. But otherwise if you wanted to plonk down larger sums of money then generally that would warrent more research, and BrickPicker seems to be a good place for sale stats, so you can see what is actually happening in the market (so not just what a set is listed at, but what it has sold at... remembering it may not sell at that again, it just depends on remaining customers or perhaps even other speculators) Really try and understand the market and people you're likely to sell to. You can also get advice from others in the same line of business, but remember you are effectively in competition with them so be very mindful ~ “if you don’t know who the sucker at the table is – it’s probably you.”, it is like getting investment advice, I don't know how regulated it is - normally disclosure of interests is required - in this case you already know they have a financial stake in that market! Disclaimer: I'm not a business guy nor have I sold any Lego sets (I have bought a few after market sets, so most of what I've commented is based on my view as a buyer). Good luck